News, ideas and a software CEO's thoughts from 25 years in the industry.

What’s Your Decision Making Style?

An interesting sidebar comes today, if a tad off-topic, from another APICS article, this one from Peter J. Sherman a Certified Supply Chain Professional living in Atlanta, GA. Sherwood provides a “quiz” to see what type of decision maker you are. It’s only 5 questions. Give it a whirl… We’ve edited it a tad for space.

You’re asked to develop a proposal to launch new product proposal. You:

Dig up data to generate some initial ideas, talk with colleagues, then write up the proposal.

Draft the proposal, add some charts, and get it in as soon as possible.

Find your group’s last product launch proposal, look at recent data, and model the new on the old.

Look up some data, run some numbers, make a couple of calls to figure out why sales are up.

Are suspicious about the increase.

Congratulate the division manager for turning things around.

You’re leading the search for a new team member and must develop guidelines for evaluating candidates. You:

Pull resumes of past top performers to help you define the ideal candidate profile.

Talk to several people you think might be interested in the job and try to understand what their profiles would look like.

Check previously used criteria to fill similar positions.

You’re evaluating options for a product redesign and your market research is inconclusive. You:

Choose the option you think your team is most likely to make work.

Rely on your best sense of what your customers will like.

Commission more market research before making a decision.

Your boss asks you to prepare the department budget for next year. You:

Review recent budget trends and meet with team leaders to learn whether forecasts need to be adjusted for changing conditions.

Ask your team leaders to provide their budget expectations and aggregate the results.

Project the budget on the basis of an extensive analysis of historical trends.

Interpreting the results: According to Mr. Sherwood: “If most of your answers are 1s, you’re an informed skeptic. If most are 2s, you’re a visceral decision maker. If most are 3s, you’re an unquestioning empiricist” (you derive your knowledge from experience). The tie-breaker, by the way, is Question #3 if you need one.